When That Nice Beatle Got Mad and Wrote a Song

 

Paul McCartney had left the Fab Four and started Wings in early 1972, but everyone still thought of him as that Nice Beatle.

Affable Paul McCartney was always the nice Beatle, the one with the boyish smile and easy disposition.  Not much into politics or causes.  That was John’s thing.  One of the most gifted and prolific song writers of all time, he specialized in catchy melodies and memorable hooks.  His lyrics were simple and straightforward.  The deep stuff, well, that was mostly John, too.  As he would put it in the song for his new band Wings, “Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs.  And what’s wrong with that?”

But on January 30, 1972 Paul got mad.  Really mad.  Mad enough to write a song.

That morning he heard shocking news from Londonderry, Northern Island.  Members of a unit of elite paratroopers had opened fire on unarmed and peaceful demonstration against detention without trial.  13 were killed outright and dozens wounded.

Authorities had decided to allow the march within Catholic Derry but to prevent it from entering Guildhall Square.  The First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1 Para) was sent to the scene with specific orders to block the march at that point with force, if necessary.

Leaders decided not to challenge the troops, diverting the main march to Free Derry Corner, where they were assured they would be safe from attack.  A small number of local youths, however, broke from the main march and continued to Guildhall Square, pelting an Army Barracks with stones and taunting troops. Water cannon, tear gas, and rubber bullets were deployed, but two rioters were shot and wounded by live ammunition.

At 4 PM, responding to unfounded rumors of an IRA sniper, the Paras were ordered to enter the Bogside district where the peaceful marchers were still assembled. An order was given to fire live rounds.  17 year old Jackie Duddy was shot next to a Roman Catholic Priest as both fled from the troops.  Orders were given to continue to pursue demonstrators at the edge of Free Derry Square.  

An image that shocked the world and enraged Paul McCartney--a Priest waved a bloody handkerchief as a white flag while onlookers try to rush a mortally wounded young man to safety under the fire of elite British Paratroopers.

Troops opened up with indiscriminate fire and continued to shoot even after receiving direct orders to stop.  Twelve more, all unarmed, were killed while fleeing or while attempting to aid those who had fallen.  At least one was shot and killed while waving a white handkerchief and going to the aid of a fallen boy.  Another was shot and injured then executed by a close range shot to the head as he pleaded that he had lost feeling in his legs.  14 others were shot, one of whom, shot at some distance from the main action and not even involved, died months later.  Two demonstrators were run over and seriously maimed by armored personnel carriers. No British soldier was wounded by gunfire or reported any injuries.

Bloody Sunday, as it came to be known changed everything.  Any chance at peaceful change through non-violent protest was out the window.  Radicalized youth flocked to the militant Provisional IRA (Provos) who stepped up their own military campaign against the Army.

Of course, that day McCartney didn’t know all the details.  But he did know that many young men, a lot of them with shaggy dark hair, shod in Beatle boots, and wearing thin coats styled after the now passé—in Britain—Mod look that the Fab Four had popularized, could have been him.

Like so many Liverpudlians, McCartney was of Irish descent.  His mother was an Irish Catholic, his father a lapsed Protestant.  While baptized Catholic, he was sent to secular schools, not parochial ones, and brought up in a household in which religion played a minor role.  But he knew that no matter how deep his family’s roots in England might be, he would always be a bog hopper to many.

After watching BBC coverage of the event, an angry, passionate McCartney set down and in less than two hours banged out the lyrics and picked out a tune on the piano.  His wife, Linda, was by his side.  He would share writing credit for the song with her.  It was the same arrangement he had with his former writing partner, John Lennon.  And just as some Lennon and McCartney songs were totally his own work, so was the song he called Give Ireland Back to the Irish.

Wings at the recording session--Henry McCullough, Denny Laine, McCartney, Linda McCartney, and Denny Seiwell.  It was Irish guitarist McCollough's first recording session with the band.  After the song was released his brother was beaten in Belfast by a Protestant para-military gang in retribution.

That night he called his mates in his new band Wings to meet him at Island Studios in London’s Notting Hill on February 1, in just two days.  For Irish guitarist Henry McCullough it was his first recording session with the band.  With his usual meticulous attention to detail, McCartney arranged to have a crew on hand to film and document the band as it learned and rehearsed the song.  In a little more than two hours, two tracks were laid down—vocal and an instrumental version of the song.

McCartney was adamant about rushing the record to release as a single.  When word of his plans reached the ears of executives at his record label, all hell broke loose.  McCartney would later recall:

From our point of view it was the first time people questioned what we were doing in Ireland. It was so shocking. I wrote Give Ireland Back to the Irish, we recorded it and I was promptly phoned by the Chairman of EMI [Wings’ record label], Sir Joseph Lockwood, explaining that they wouldn’t release it. He thought it was too inflammatory. I told him that I felt strongly about it and they had to release it. He said, “Well it’ll be banned”, and of course it was. I knew Give Ireland Back to the Irish wasn’t an easy route, but it just seemed to me to be the time. All of us in Wings felt the same about it. But Henry McCullough’s brother who lived in Northern Ireland was beaten up because of it. The thugs found out that Henry was in Wings.

Lockwood, of course, could not afford to alienate his label’s biggest asset.  The records were pressed and shipped, complete with provocative shamrocks adorning the yellow label.  The single was released with the vocal version on the A side and the instrumental on the B on February 25 in the United Kingdom and Ireland and three days later in the U.S.  

Paul shared credit with his wife Linda who was with him during the intense writing session, but the melody and lyrics were all his.  To make the single, which was rushed to release over the anguished objection of his EMI label, even more provocative, McCartney had the platter festooned with defiant shamrocks.

As predicted it was banned.  Every effort was made to suppress any knowledge of it. It was banned by the BBC, Radio Luxembourg, and the Independent Television Authority. On the BBC Radio 1 hit parade show Pick of the Pops, Alan Freeman had to refer to it as “a record by the group Wings.” McCartney and Wings were denounced in thundering newspaper editorials and in the House of Commons.  McCartney, the former darling of the press, was suddenly a pariah, at least among the Tory establishment and many “patriotic” ordinary Britons.

McCartney told friends, “I’ll never be a knight now.”  He was eventually knighted by Queen Elizabeth more than two decades later in 1995 after many lesser pop musicians were elevated ahead of him.  Even then there was a minor furor among Tories at the honor.

All four Beatles had been on the Queen's List for the Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1965.  Iconoclast John Lennon returned his medal to the Queen with a cheeky note.  McCartney became the first to win full knighthood in 1995 after other pop stars had been honored.  John was already dead.  George Harrison was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) but turned down the honor feeling snubbed after Paul's knighthood.  Ringo Starr was finally dubbed in 2018.

Despite the bans, folks in Britain could hear the song on broadcasts from the Irish Republic and the Continent.  And, as always, the lure of the banned drew thousands to record shops to snap up the discs.  Despite the ban Give Ireland Back to the Irish climbed to # 16 on the UK Singles Chart, and # 21 in the US Billboard Hot 100.  Quite naturally it soared to the top of the Irish charts and sat there for a while.

Did McCartney’s uncharacteristic protest change anything?  Who knows?  But in fact, public opinion in Britain slowly evolved, even though the bloody IRA bombing campaign that followed which hardened many hearts against the Irish.  When the facts about Bloody Sunday slowly emerged, the consensus was that it was not only a tragedy, but an unmitigated disaster.  It took decades but eventually the Accords guaranteeing minority Catholic rights and the disarmament of both the IRA and Protestant paramilitaries resulted in a sometimes still uneasy peace in a war weary nation.  The Army was withdrawn. 

Anyway, here is what Paul McCartney wrote that day in his righteous anger.

Give Ireland Back to the Irish

Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today

Great Britain you are tremendous
And nobody knows like me
But really what are you doin’
In the land across the sea

Tell me how would you like it
If on your way to work
You were stopped by Irish soldiers
Would you lie down do nothing
Would you give in, or go berserk

Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today

Great Britain and all the people
Say that all people must be free
Meanwhile back in Ireland
There’s a man who looks like me

And he dreams of god and country
And he’s feeling really bad
And he’s sitting in a prison
Should he lie down do nothing
Should give in or go mad

Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today

Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today.

 

—Paul McCartney

 

George the Dragon Slaying Saint Inspired Verse—National Poetry Month 2022 April 23, 2021

St. George in Myth.

Today is the Feast Day of St. George as observed in England where he became the nation’s Patron Saint and is represented on the Union Jack by the upright red cross.  George is also venerated by Orthodox Christians and is the Patron Saint of Greece as well, which explains why so many restaurant owners are named George.  But the Eastern and Western versions of why George is such a popular saint are very different.

Unlike some early popular saints there was apparently a historical George.   He was born around 256 A.D. probably in Palestine where his father, Gerontius, was a Patrician noble of Greek origin in the Roman Army occupying the province of Syria Palaestina.  The family was Christian.  George followed his father’s profession and rose rapidly in the Legions.  By his mid-twenties he was said to be a military tribune and stationed as an imperial guard of the Emperor at Nicomedia in northeast Asia Minor, then the capital of the eastern portion of the Roman Empire.  He was said to be a favorite of Galerius, Caesar in the East under Diocletian, Augustus in Rome. 

George would likely have campaigned with Galerius against the Copts in Egypt and in the disastrous war with the Sassanid Persians.  Christians in the Army, especially senior officers were scapegoated for the loss.  In 305 A.D.  Diocletian, with Galerius’s support ordered all army officers to abandon Christianity and make public sacrifice to the Roman gods on pain of death.

George reportedly sold his slaves and gave away his wealth to the poor preparing to meet his fate.  Called personally before Galerius, the Emperor tried to convert his soldier and offered him new honors, titles, and lands as inducement.  George remained steadfast and was sentenced to death.  According to legend on his last night Galerius dispatched a comely virgin to George to remind him of the pleasures of the flesh, but instead of sleeping with her, he converted her on the spot, thus sealing the lass’s doom as well.

The next day, April 23, 303 A.D. George was beheaded but faced his fate with such equanimity that Empress Alexandra of Rome became a Christian as well and soon she joined George in martyrdom.

                                The elaborate Martyrdom of St. George by Renaissance master Paolo Veronese.  Note--no dragon.

George’s body was returned to his home town of Lydda in Palestine for burial.  His crypt quickly became a shrine for pilgrims and a sect of veneration spread across the East.  He was the most prominent of the 14 Soldier Saints who fell to Diocletian’s persecution.  He is venerated among Orthodox Christians as one of the great martyrs of the Church, and is especially adored by Greeks.

Historians quibble over the veracity of all of the details of this narrative, but most agree that there was soldier and that he was connected with the Diocletian persecution.

But you will notice the total absence of any mention of a dragon in this account, nor does the beast figure in Greek veneration or traditional iconography at least until the dragon tale is introduced from the West.

                               St. George, soldier saint, in a traditional style Greek icon.

George was so popular that the Muslims adopted him as a saint, transferring his martyrdom to the Kingdom of Mosul where he was said to have been executed three times and been resurrected from the dead each time.

George was officially canonized in the Western or Catholic Church in 494 by Pope Gelasius I, as among those “whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God,” which included other legendary figures like St. Christopher and St. Valentine.  Still he was little known in the West until Crusaders brought his cult home, where it especially flourished in England and Sweden.  The knightly reverence for a soldier saint was key.

                    Horus slays Set as a crocodile in Egyptian myth--a model for St. George.

The origins of the Dragon story are somewhat obscure.  Elements of the tale may be traced to Egypt where the god Horus killed Set metamorphosed into a crocodile.  It may also have borrowed from the Muslim accounts with the dragon as a metaphor for the monster king of Mosul.  The Crusaders, however, were literalists, and the symbol may have been transformed into substance

The earliest reference to a Dragon may have been in a 12th Century Latin text but the story began to be codified in the Speculum Historiale and the Golden Legend of the 13th Century.  The latter was especially the inspiration of bards, poets, and various versions of the tale started showing up across late Midlevel Europe. 

In Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea—The Golden Legend—Silene in Libya was plagued by a venom-spewing dragon dwelling in a nearby pond, poisoning the countryside.  The local people placated the dragon with gifts of sheep but the insatiable beast was soon demanding human sacrifices which were chosen by lot among the children.  Eventually the King’s daughter fell to the lottery and she was sent, dressed a bride, to meet her doom.  The king offered his fortune to save his favorite child.

The Marriage of St. George and the Princes from the Golden Legend by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Enter George, a virtuous Knight traveling by chance alone in the Kingdom.  Hearing of the damsel’s plight, he made the Sign of the Cross and charged the monster on horseback, seriously wounding it with his lance.  The princess lassoed the dragon with her girdle and together the two led the subdued beast back to the King’s city, where George decapitates it with his broadsword.  In gratitude the King and all of the citizens convert to Christianity.   In later versions of the story George weds the lovely Princes, who is given different names.

The story may have originated with Georgian folk tales before the Crusader’s got it into the hands of Jacobus de Voragine.

At any rate, it was the perfect yarn for the age that was inventing Chivalry as magical as any Arthurian legend. 

George began to inspire armies including the Franks at the siege of Antioch, in 1098, and at Jerusalem the following year.  The knightly Order of Sant Jordi d’Alfama was established by King Peter the Catholic of Aragon in 1201 followed by the Republic of Genoa, Kingdom of Hungary, and by Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor in the 14th Century.

In England George had been mentioned as early as Alfred the Great’s will but it was not until 1222 Synod of Oxford that Saint George's Day was declared a feast day. Edward III of put the Order of the Garter under the banner of St. George around 1348. The chronicler Jean Froissart observed the English invoked Saint George as a battle cry on several occasions during the Hundred Years’ War with France.

George was slowly, unofficially rising as a national saint, a position officially occupied by Edward the Confessor.  England was rife with local saints and their shrines like that of Thomas Becket at Canterbury but these could invoke regional loyalties, not national ones, and be identified with Normans or Saxons.  George was aided by the very fact that he had no legendary connection with England, and no specifically localized shrine.  He could thus be a national symbol—or at least one for the feudal warlords and their men at arms who held sway over the country.

                                          St. George as a Crusader knight.by Bernot Martorell.

The red-on-white cross was originally associated with the Knights Templar and subsequently with the Crusades in general and the noble houses who wished to be associated with it.  It began to be identified with St. George and began to be used as a banner by the Knights of the Order of the Garter.  From 1348 and throughout the 15th Century, the Saint George’s Cross was shown in the hoist of the Royal Standards of the Plantagenet kings of England.  With the the dynastic union of England and Scotland in 1603, it was combined with the white on blue x-shaped Cross of St. Andrew for Scotland for what became the Union Flag, eventually the national flag of Great Britain.  In 1801 following the following the union Great Britain and Ireland the red Cross of St. Patrick was imposed on a background of the white Cross of St. Andrew to complete the modern Union Jack national flag of the United Kingdom.

The England's Flag of St. George, right, incorporated into the Union Jack.

St. George and his Cross were such a popular symbol for England that both survived the Puritan Commonwealth unscathed.  St. George’s Cross was the only Saint’s banner that was allowed to be flown.

Today the modern Catholic Church is somewhat embarrassed by the dragon lore.  Like Valentine and others his feast has been demoted on the liturgical calendar, although he did not lose his saintly status entirely like St. Christopher.  His feast, however, is still celebrated in by Catholics and the Church of England alike as well as across much of the old Empire and Commonwealth.

Needless to say, with such fertile ground, poets have had much to say about St. George and his dragon beginning with almost endless medieval ballads, which I will spare you here.

Cicely Fox Smith was an English poet and writer born in Lymm, Cheshire on February 1, 1882 and educated at Manchester High School for Girls.  She briefly lived in Canada, before returning to the United Kingdom shortly before the outbreak of World War I.  Before her death in 1954 she wrote and published more than 600 poems, many with patriotic or naval theams.  A popular and much beloved non-academic poet here she invoked St. George, as so many had done before, to answer the call to battle, this time against the “Huns” in the Great War of 1914-1918.

                    Cicely Fox Smith.

St. George of England

Saint George he was a fighting man, as all the tales do tell;
He fought a battle long ago, and fought it wondrous well.
With his helmet, and his hauberk, and his good cross-hilted sword,
Oh, he rode a-slaying dragons to the glory of the Lord.
And when his time on earth was done, he found he could not rest
Where the year is always summer in the Islands of the Blest;
So he came to earth again, to see what he could do,
And they cradled him in England -
In England, April England -
Oh, they cradled him in England where the golden willows blew!

Saint George he was a fighting man, and loved a fighting breed,
And whenever England wants him now, he's ready at her need,
From Crecy field to Neuve Chapelle he's there with hand and sword,
And he sailed with Drake from Devon to the glory of the Lord.
His arm is strong to smite the wrong and break the tyrant's pride,
He was there when Nelsom triumphed, he was there when Gordon died;
He sees his red-cross ensign float on all the winds that blow,
But ah! His heart’s in England -
In England, April England -
Oh, his heart it turns to England where the golden willows grow!

Saint George he was a fighting man, he’s here and fighting still
While any wrong is yet to right or Dragon yet to kill,
And faith! He’s finding work this day to suit his war-worn sword,
For he’s strafing Huns in Flanders to the glory of the Lord.
Saint George he is a fighting man, but when the fighting’s past,
And dead among the trampled fields the fiercest and the last
Of all the Dragons earth has known beneath his feet lies low,
Oh, his heart will turn to England -
To England, April England -
He’ll come home to rest in England where the golden willows blow!

—Cicely Fox Smith

Brian Patten.

Brian Patten is a 76 year-old English poet from Liverpool that first rose to prominence with the late ‘60’s poetry anthology The Mersey Sound.  He has written autobiographical collections for adults as well as books for children and young adults.  Here he had a very different take on both the dragon and St. George.  Of note, you should know that it is customary to wear a red rose on St. George’s Day in England, which, by the way was also the symbol of the Lancastrians in the War of the Roses.

The True Dragon

St George was out walking
He met a dragon on a hill,
It was wise and wonderful
Too glorious to kill
 
It slept amongst the wild thyme
Where the oxlips and violets grow
Its skin was a luminous fire
That made the English landscape glow
 
Its tears were England’s crystal rivers
Its breath the mist on England’s moors
Its larder was England’s orchards,
Its house was without doors
 
St George was in awe of it
It was a thing apart
He hid the sleeping dragon
Inside every English heart
 
So on this day let’s celebrate
England’s valleys full of light,
The green fire of the landscape
Lakes shivering with delight
 
Let’s celebrate St George’s Day,
The dragon in repose;
The brilliant lark ascending,
The yew, the oak, the rose.

 

—Brian Patten

 

Elvis Megonagall.

Elvis Mcgonagall was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1960 and is a stand-up comic and is notable for poetry slam performances.  He is also something of a Scottish nationalist despite currently residing in Dorset in England.  He takes a Scott’s more jaundiced view of George and the hoopla surrounding him.

George!

 

Once more unto the breach, dear Morris Dancers once more

Jingle your bells, thwack sticks, raise flagons

Cry “God for Harry and Saint George!”

Gallant knight and slayer of dragons

Patron saint of merry England –

And Georgia, and Catalonia, and Portugal, Beirut, Moscow

Istanbul, Germany, Greece

Archers, farmers, boy scouts, butchers and sufferers of syphilis

Multicultural icon with sword and codpiece

On, on you bullet-headed saxon sons

Fly flags from white van and cab

But remember stout yeomen, your champion was Turkish

So – get drunk and have a kebab.

 

—Elvis Mcgonagall

Another dissenting view came from Nancy Senior, who casts a skeptical eye on the assumptions of would-be savior knights, and maybe men in general.

St. George  slays the Dragon by Jost Haller.

St. George

My dragon always loved walks

He used to go to the wall

where the golden chain hung

and take it in his mouth

laying his head on my lap sideways,

so the fire wouldn’t burn my skirt

 

He looked so funny that way

with his wings dragging the floor

and his rear end high up

because he couldn’t bend his hind legs.

 

With him on the leash,

I could go anywhere

No band of robbers dared attack.

 

This morning in the woods

we had stopped for a drink

where a spring gushes out of a cave.

 

when suddenly, a man in amour

riding a white horse

leapt out of the bushes crying

“Have no fear I will save you”

And before I could say a word

he had stabbed my dragon in the throat

and leaping down from the horse

cut off his head

and held it up for me to see

the poor eyes still surprised

and mine filling with tears/

He hadn’t even had time to put out his claws.

 

And the man said

“Don’t cry, Maiden

You are safe now

But let me give some good advice

Don’t ever walk alone in the woods

for the next time you meet a dragon

there might not be a knight around to save you.

 

—Nancy Senior